I haven’t been hiking much this year, such is the life with young twins. I look forward to the day they can join me, but for now the tougher hikes have to be without them. Since it’s now fall, I figured this weekend was one of my last chances to get up into the mountains. I decided to try Saint Marks Summit, which is close to Vancouver and only 11km so something I could finish before lunch. I roped my friend Andrew into joining me, and he brought along his great awesome dog Genny. [See previous hikes in Lynn Valley, the Chief, and the Lions.] The overall route is 11km round trip, and it took us almost exactly two hours to...

On September 16, we had a full moon which was also our harvest moon. The harvest moon is the full moon closest to the fall equinox (Sept. 22nd). Since it was a beautiful clear night, I thought I would test out the Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 VR lens. Here is the shot, which isn’t too bad for a relatively inexpensive lens (and Nikon...

The BBC has the most amazing footage of the natural world. I own several of their sets, including Blue Planet and Planet Earth. If you haven’t seen them, I recommend you do. This short video is another great sequence that few could capture. It shows an ice ‘Brinicle’ forming under the Antarctic ice sheet, you can read more about it here. BBC prevents embedding, view the video on their site here.

I have seen a lot of good high speed photography, but Alan Sailer has some of the most interesting shots out there. These shots are taken using some specialized equipment, including an ‘air gap flash’. I have never heard of this device until today, and apparently it’s a DIY flash that has the potential to kill you. Standard flashes (Canon, Nikon) have a minimum duration of 1/40,000th of a second. It seems short, but when photographing bullets it’s an eternity. At 1000 feet/second (not that fast in bullet terms), that bullet can travel 1/3rd of an inch so it’s more of a streak in the image than a bullet...

Looks like The Hobbit will be filmed in 3D using a whole bunch of Red Epic cameras. Check out the link below to see the 3D rig they put together, very cool. They are also shooting everything at 5K and 48 frames per second. Should be a visually amazing movie. Engadget Link w/ Video